An Ounce of Blood
by Rebecca Hb
Summary: Mai is eight and she is supposed to go to the Fire Nation Academy for Girls in a week. Only her parents haven't come to fetch her from Uncle Naruzi's house.


**An Ounce of Blood**

###

_An ounce of blood is worth more than a pound of friendship. - _Spanish proverb

###

Summer was dying. Mai could see it out the windows of Uncle's house by the shore. She could feel it in the breeze, and the way the afternoon showers had turned cold. The flowers weren't blooming anymore, and the tomatoes were thick and heavy in the garden.

Last year, her parents had come to fetch her a week before now. Mother had said they would come two weeks earlier this year, so she would have time to get ready for her first year at the academy. Mother had rattled off a list: the proper new clothes, the proper books, the proper hairstyle, the proper servant to get her ready each day. It had all sounded very boring. It _still_ sounded very boring, but her parents hadn't come.

She wondered if they'd forgotten about her.

She pressed her lips together and ignored the little shake in the back of her shoulders. She was a big girl. Big girls didn't get scared of being abandoned, and they certainly didn't cry. Not when they were **eight**.

Mai went to find her uncle.

###

Uncle Naruzi was in the garden, gathering a basket of tomatoes. Mai stepped into the straw sandals Mother didn't know she was allowed to wear and sat down on the stone step leading up into the house. Her uncle had very few rules as to how she ought to behave, but one of them was that she must not interrupt him while he was gardening. It was the time when he could let go of the responsibilities and frustrations of being the Warden of Boiling Rock Prison, and that was very important to him.

So she sat quietly and watched, some part of her hoping he would send the servants away and make salsa himself tonight. He always let her help, giving her knives to cut up the avocados and mangos he used in his salsa.

"What is it, Mai?" he asked when he came in from the garden.

"I'm supposed to be at the Fire Nation Academy for Girls next week." She stood and peeked into the basket. His tomatoes were long and red, and she scooped one of the little ones out to eat.

Uncle Naruzi didn't say anything about that. He never did. Once it was brought in from the garden, it was fair game.

He kicked off his muddy sandals and stepped up into the house. "Your mother is pregnant, Mai."

Mai blinked, tomato juice running down her fingers. When had _that_ happened?

"You know she doesn't have children easily," he continued as he headed towards the kitchen. "So she's taken to her bed in the hopes that you'll have a sibling soon. So you won't be going to the Academy this year. You'll go next year."

"-But all the girls will be younger than me."

Uncle Naruzi sighed. "If I'd been in charge of this, your mother wouldn't have even married that idiot Zatoru. He could have gotten you prepared for the Academy just as well as she could."

Mai nodded. Father could have. Maybe not as well, but he knew what books she would need and he had servants to know what clothes she would need. Not letting her go until next year was unnecessary and stupid, the two things he disliked the most in dealing with other people.

"Out," Uncle Naruzi ordered when he slid open the kitchen door, and the handful of servants vanished. He set the basket down on the counter, and Mai went to get the stepstool so she could cut what needed cutting. While she did that, he fetched mangos from the streamhouse. It took him long enough that she went to fetch the avocados they had picked three days ago and had already started peeling them when he came back inside.

He smiled to see her. "Bright _an_d pretty. You'll have any boy you want when you're older."

"Boys are dumb," she informed him, and he laughed.

###

It wasn't until after they made the salsa and started eating it that she remembered the other thing. "Even if Mother is staying in bed, Father could have come to get me."

Her uncle picked up one of the forks and tossed it lightly from hand to hand. "He thought your mother would decide she was well enough to prepare you for the Academy, strain herself, and lose the baby if you came home."

"Oh." Mai dipped one of her uncle's weird orange carrots in the salsa. She swirled it in there, trying to catch one of the mango chunks on it.

Uncle Naruzi abruptly threw the fork so hard it stuck in the wall, quivering. "Idiot! She should never have married him!"

Mai blinked, staring at the fork in the wood. "... I want to do that."

**-End-**


End file.
